At this time last year, I was serving my notice at Lyst and was thinking of starting this blog to help others moving to a new data leadership role.
My plan was to join Ruby Labs as VP of Data and stay for at least the four years it would take for my options to vest, or an earlier exit. You know what they say… if you want to make God laugh, make some plans.
It was also around this time that I started to have a regular catch up with Kevin Hu of Metaplane… hold this thought for later.
I spent a furious six weeks at Ruby Labs trying to form a data team from current members and trying to hire, while also helping with the Series A data room1. Little did I know, we were entering the toughest funding market in the history of VC. Sadly, the role I was enjoying at Ruby Labs could not continue without securing further funding. However, the exposure I had there to running a business and the fundraising process inspired me to stay in startups.
I then joined Avora as a co-founder, to help it spin out of its previous business to a new business focused on Metrics Observability. I had much more exposure to the fundraising process and learnt a lot about perspectives towards the Modern Data Stack and data as an industry. Whilst I was excited about the possibility of metrics/semantic layers in data and all the possibilities they enable, the truth is that most companies are struggling just to get the basics in data done. The Data Chasm is real.
It was clear to me, from speaking to VCs and other helpful people in the space, that as an industry, we were struggling with our fundamentals. Even as I pivoted my pitch for Avora to focus on aiding prospects who needed help further down the stack, I realised we needed to go even further as an industry. Ricky and I called time on seeking further funding for Avora at the start of June - investors and VCs had lost faith in investing in tools higher up the stack and for good reason. Avora continues to serve its customers and we continue to progress it in the background.
You might read this and feel that it must have been a tough time for me - and it was in certain ways - but in retrospect, I realise I gained in 6 months what most people might gain in a couple of years from doing a Masters or MBA. I don’t regret it at all. I didn’t lose… I learnt.
I started considering what I could do next - I felt I could offer value to another Data SaaS startup in a number of ways: Content Writing, Developer Relations, Product Management and possibly some actual Data work. I remember having my catch up with Kevin and mentioning that I was speaking to other founders about a possible next role - Kevin asked me about what I would want to do in a role and I pretty much spouted the list above, verbatim. He said come and do it at Metaplane and honestly, quickly and transparently made me his best offer… the rest is recent history.
Why Metaplane over the other startups I was speaking to? I knew that, as an industry, we had to focus further down the stack - at solving data fundamentals. Data Quality is the most important of those fundamentals to solve. Having possibly been the first Data leader in the UK to buy a Data Observability SaaS tool, and deciding that I would never do without one on my production data again, I knew I was aligned with the mission of Metaplane.
With the recession looming and Metaplane’s competitive and open pricing, long runway and lean-a-f setup, I knew it was in as strong a position in the market as it could be. Just as importantly as any of these business fundamentals, I knew I would get on great with Kevin, his co-founders and team. Despite Kevin growing up in Connecticut and Michigan (read Detroit Metro) and me growing up in East London, as diaspora children we have such huge similarities in our backgrounds - I’ve never worked closely with anyone who understood my mindset and resulting drive so well.
My first day at Metaplane was also my 35th Birthday, at Snowflake Summit in Las Vegas! We also attended Big Data London and then Coalesce 2022 in New Orleans, where I was fortunate enough to speak to a packed-out room 😅 on the Return on Analytics Engineering.
Soon after returning home from New Orleans, Twitter started to implode. I was sad at the thought that I would possibly lose the data community there and decided to make a place for those people, and more, to go: data-folks.masto.host. I never thought it would blow up in the way it did - we’re at over 2k (1k daily active) users!
Sometimes, just as you think you’re ready to ramp up and move forward, life throws you a reality check. I ended up having a two week convalescence in hospital, resulting in me leaving with an ICD2 in my chest. I will write about this once I’ve had the headspace to process it (and some associated data, of course). This kind of life event makes you appreciate what you have, and consider how you spend the rest of the time you have on this Earth. I asked myself - if I’m halfway through… what do I want to do with the rest? Some might feel this is morbid, but it does help you focus on what's really important.
I’ll end with some things I’m grateful for from 2022:
My family and friends, I’m blessed to have you all
The care I received at St Barts Hospital
The wonderful community of data people at data-folks.masto.host
Metaplane crew
Coalesce 2022 - I loved it, such a privilege to present and speak to so many people I had previously only interacted with digitally
Everything I learnt this year, which is more than many years before combined
While I won’t pray that next year will be less eventful, I do hope I spend less of it in a hospital and more of it with great data folks!
I hope to be in Boston/NYC at some point in March and definitely in San Diego in October for Coalesce 2023. I hope to host London Data Quality Meetup 3 early in Q1 2023 and I will be attending any London Meetup to do with Analytics/Data Engineering that I can! I hope to meet as many of you as possible, please come and say hi if you see me.
Lots of love to you all, and here’s to a great 2023! 💜
I introduced Hex to Ruby Labs as a medium for the Data Room. It was a great choice and highlighted the difference between Seed and Series A funding rounds in terms of data requirements from investors.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/implantable-cardioverter-defibrillator-icd-insertion
Hey David, the respect you have for Kevin shines through and the Metaplane crew sounds awesome! Wishing you a speedy recovery and happy 2023!
What a year for you, was a pleasure to hear your talk in NOLA!. Wishing you lots of good health in 2023